Laura Rowland - Bedlam - The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

Galleries of cells rose three stories high, to a glass roof. They stank of privies. My throat closed up, my stomach turned, and I tried not to breathe. All around me echoed the deafening chatter and noise of hundreds of women who milled about a large room below the galleries. As we were brought into their midst, the inmates stared at us. Some were mere girls; others tough, hardened crones. Many called out lewd greetings or insults. The warders herded everyone into a line for breakfast. When I got to the front, I received a piece of bread and a bowl of gruel. The food was meager in portion, grayish and sour. Outrage rose up through my misery. I was a law-abiding citizen, a bestselling authoress. I didn’t deserve to be treated thus!

But railing at my fate would do me no good; I must endure until rescue came. Walking to the tables where the women sat on benches to eat, I saw a vacant place. I started to set my food on the table, but one of the women said, “That place’s taken.” When I tried other tables, the women said, “You can’t sit there.” They were subjecting me to the sort of treatment that bullies at school inflicted on new girls. Soon I was the only person without a seat. I stood alone in the middle of the room, holding my food, all eyes on me.

“Sit here.” The woman who’d spoken patted the place next to her on the bench. She had a dumpy figure and the face of a prizefighter who’d lost too many matches. Her nose looked as if it had been broken and healed crookedly. Her eyes were shrewd in a broad face marked by a hint of a mustache.

I was afraid of her, but I sat. “Thank you,” I said politely.

The women smirked and repeated my words, mimicking my accent. With my first utterance I’d established myself as a member of a different class, an outsider.

“My name’s Poll,” said the prizefighter. “What’s yours?”

“Charlotte,” I said.

“If you aren’t going to eat your food, Charlotte, I’ll take it,” said a young blonde girl who sat on Poll’s other side. She would have been pretty if not for the permanent sneer that twisted her mouth. Her hand shot across Poll to snatch my bread.

Poll slapped her and said, “Not now, Maisie.” She seemed to be the leader of this set of women. “What’re you in for?” Poll asked me.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. “I really shouldn’t be here.”

The group hooted with laughter. “Neither have we,” Poll said, “but here we are, and so are you. Now, what’re you in for?”

“Murder,” I reluctantly admitted.

“Really?” Maisie said. She and the other women stared at me in respectful awe.

A scowl turned Poll’s face even more menacing. “You ain’t no murderess. I am.” Her hand thumped her ample breast. “I knifed that son-of-a-bitch slave driver who beat me when I was workin’ in the poorhouse. After I’m tried and convicted, I’ll hang.” She apparently enjoyed special status in the prison because she’d committed the most violent, serious crime, and she didn’t want someone else overtaking her. “You’re lyin’.”

“Who’d you kill?” Maisie asked me.

“A Russian actress named Katerina was stabbed to death,” I said, “but I didn’t-”

“You’re havin’ one on us,” Poll said, her ugly face turning crimson with rage. “You never killed no one.”

How I wished the police were as convinced of my innocence as she was! “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I’ll teach you to play jokes on me!” Poll hauled back her fist. I lurched sideways, dodged the blow, and toppled off the bench. Poll lunged after me and bumped another inmate, a woman with wild red hair and a stevedore’s build, who happened to walk past at that moment.

“Hey! Watch what yer doin’!” The other woman shoved Poll.

They began to fight. Suddenly, all the pent-up energy in the prison was let loose. I watched with amazement as women jumped up from the tables. They egged on Poll and her opponent. Fights broke out among them. They slapped and kicked and clawed and screamed; they hurled bowls. Gruel splattered me as I crawled, frantically seeking safety. Male warders plunged into the chaos, yanking combatants apart. Soon they had restored order. As they dragged Poll away, she pointed at me and yelled, “She started it!”

A warder grabbed me. “It wasn’t my fault,” I protested.

“It’s the dark cells for you both,” he said.

“Not the dark cells!” Poll cried, her tough bravado turning to fright. She struggled as the men marched us down a corridor. “Please! No!”

I went without resisting. I couldn’t imagine what place could be worse than the one I had just left. My escort opened a door and pushed me in. I saw a tiny, windowless cell, a wooden bench, a tin chamber pot. Then the door slammed, shutting me in complete darkness and silence. The room was soundproofed; not a noise could I hear from outside. I groped over to the bench and sat. For a time this punishment seemed mild. I was thankful to be away from the women who’d mocked and abused me, glad to be alone with my thoughts. By now the priest should have arrived in Gloucester Terrace with the news of my arrest. George Smith would obtain me a solicitor, who would persuade the court to drop the charge against me. Soon George would come to take me home. All I needed to do was wait patiently.

But as time went on, I noticed the discomforts of my cell. It was dank, too warm, and smelled of stale urine. I had to use the chamber pot, which added to the unsavory atmosphere. The bench was hard, and the eerie silence gave me a frightening sense that the world outside had ceased to exist. While the hours passed-I knew not how many-my hopes of rescue ebbed. I felt as if the darkness were preying on me, dissolving my body. I touched my arms, legs, and head, trying to make sure that they were still there. Because I could not see myself, I felt like a wraith. I began to think I would die.

Ridden by fear, I closed my eyes in an attempt to shut out the darkness. But the darkness behind my eyelids was the same as in this black tomb. I tried to envision the moors that surround Haworth, their grasses waving in the fresh wind, their purple heather blooming, the wide blue sky. But instead I saw a large, stately chamber, its walls colored a soft, pinkish fawn hue. On a crimson carpet stood a bed piled high with mattresses beneath a snowy white counterpane, supported on massive mahogany pillars, hung with curtains of deep red. Blinds covered windows festooned with red damask drapery. It was the Red Room at Gateshead Hall, where Jane Eyre had been sent by Mrs. Reed as punishment for disobedience.

I opened my eyes, but the vision persisted. It appeared utterly real, perfect in every detail, no matter that Jane Eyre, Gateshead Hall, and Mrs. Reed were pure fantasy that I had created myself. The darkness, the silence, and my fear pushed me across the magic threshold between fact and fiction. I became the ten-year-old Jane Eyre, seated on her ottoman by the chimneypiece in the Red Room. I saw her small, forlorn figure-mine-reflected in the great looking glass. I raged against the injustice that had been done to her, to me.

What a consternation of soul was mine! How all my brain was in tumult, all my heart in insurrection!

The same, irrational terror that had afflicted Jane now took hold of me, for I saw a gleam of light glide up the wall to the ceiling and quiver over my head. It was the ghost of Mr. Reed, who had died in the Red Room. Seized by panic, I would have jumped up, rushed to the door as Jane had, and pounded on it until my hands bled, had I not been too scared to move. My body shook so hard that the bench rattled. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die. Hiding my face against my knees, I prayed for deliverance.

Much later, a key rattled in the lock. I sat up and wept with relief as the door opened and blessed light fell over me. A warder stood at the threshold. “Come out,” he said. “You’ve got a visitor.”